The Do's and Don't's of Cartridge Slot removal

[Blank-Disk]

After a lot of thinking and planning about how I want to arrange my SNES/NES portable, I decided that a good course of action would be to make a cartidge slot adapter, so that I could leave the SNES board intact, while experimenting with slot locations. The idea is to remove the SNES cartirdge slot from a failed FC Twin project, attatch wires to the pins, and then attatch a game cartridge PCB (circuit board) to those wires, so I'd basically be plugging-in a slot extension. What resulted was a very hard lesson in proper, and improper proceedures for this project.

The first step was getting the baord ready for desoldering.
Don't: I started by unscrewing the slot assembly from the board, and wiggling it around to losen the pins a bit.
Do: Around the assembly is 3 metal covers, held on with only bent tabs. Though a tight fit, try and undo the four tabs on the bottom, and remove the middle, biggest cover (I'll explain why in a second).

Next I had to remove find a way to desolder all of the pins, one-by-one, so that by the time I reached the other end, each pin would be disconnected, and the assembly would be seperated from the board.
Don't: I started by using my soldering pencil on the underside of the board, and as the solder heated up, I'd push the pins until the ends were flush with the bottom of the board. The pins are loose enough in the assembly that they can be moved with little coaxing.
Do: Turn the baord over, and DEsolder from the underside. It's best to have a solder sucker handy, to remove the heated solder, so that the solder is not in your way later. Repeate this process until you've removed as much solder as possible. It is tedious, but it's safest. For even better results, get some wax style Flux and apply it to each solder joint, this helps spread the heat even faster, and more thouroughly.

Now that the pins are most of the way free, there's jsut the matter of severing the connecting to the board.
Don't: I decided to use the sharp end of my soldering pencil to push the pins all the way through the holes in the board. It seemed to work at first, but later I discovered that the solder joints ont he other side of the baord hadn't melted, and I was basically ripping the contacts out with rings of the PCB still attatched. This was especially true when i couldn't see what was holding the board on still, and physically ripped the assembly from the board
Do: Now that you've got a minimal amount of solder present, go through each horizontal row, and heat up any stuck pins, and try to wiggle them free. I say to go by horizontal rows, because that way, when you finsih one side, it'll be much easier to loosen the other row. If this doesn't work you may want to resort to the "push-through" method int he don't section, but with your metal cover off, there's little to no danger of bending the pins out of shape.

If you've done the Do's, the assembly should come off with little effort. Replace the metal cover if you want (i recommend it). If you opted to do the "push-through" methode, there's a technique to moving the pins back into place:

You'll notice on the top side of the assembly that the pins that were pushed-through seem to be moved toward the center of the slot. That's okay, all you need to do is move the pin back toward the outside edge of the slot using your finger, a flat-head screwdriver, or stick a piece of thin cardboard in the slot to simulate a game cartidge being present. By doing this, you are lining up the two tiny tabs on each side of the top of the pin to set down into the plastic retaining tabs. Then, using a pair of needle-nose pliers, grab the bottom end of the pin, and GENTLEY pull down on the pin untill the top end of the pin is in line with the rest of the pins. NEVER, EVER push down on the pin from the top!

What happened to me: I pushed all of the pins through, and because the metal cover was still on, many of the pins snagged on it, and bent backwards, mainly the 16 pins on the outside of the partitions. On top of that, I had PCB bits stuck to every pin, and couldn't remove the damaged pins. So, I heated up each pin, and used a solder sucker to remove all the excess solder and PCB rings. After that, i removed the metal cover, and pulled out all the bent pins. I then attempted to re-seat all the pins that weren't bent, which is when I learned that pushing down ont eh pins is a bad idea. When I did this, it bent up the pins, which have to be pre-bent at very specific angles, otherwise they won't contact the cartridge. So every single pint hat looked a little off had ot come out. I then meticulously re-bent every pin back into shape. I'd hold one good pin in my fingers, and then place a bad pin right nex to it and look at them fromt he side. I'd bend the bad pin with needle-nose pliers until it's angles matched the good pin. I had to do this with at least 20 pins, which isn't the majority, but still a lot. I put the pins back in, and carefully pulled them into poistion. The pins in the 4 outermost corners were the most difficult, and even though I said not to, I did have to apply a little pressure to the tops of the pins just to get them far enough through that I could grab them from the bottom. My assembly is back together now, and is as good as it's ever gonna get. I applied just a little super glue to keep the pins in place durring future adventures. I think that after I get the planned extension mod finished, I'm going to seal it all together with silicon RTV.

The plus side to all of this is that this whole catastrophy was with a $10 FC Twin that I bought pre-broken, which I think is far better than having the same issue with the $60 Retro DUo console that it's going to be attatched to.

[Kyo]

Nice post. This should probably be linked in a sticky.

[Life of Brian]

Excellent guide. Your advice is exactly what I would recommend. I use one of these puppies:

With a bit of practice you can get all of the solder off on the first try.

One note: The Retro Duo is a pain to relocate the cartridge slot on! No wonder lovablechevy had such a hard time - it's much harder than on an SNES mini. The metal is a bit flimsy on the pins and there aren't any plastic tabs on the side of the slot to grab to help pull it up.

[Blank-Disk]

thanks for the comments, i'm glad you guys approved. The kind of solder sucker i use is spring loaded.
<img src="http://www.apogeekits.com/images/desold ... l_vtd3.jpg">
THe one I used is a bit more powerful than the one pictured, and is quite violent when it goes off, but it cleans off the solder really well.

[lovablechevy]

One note: The Retro Duo is a pain to relocate the cartridge slot on! No wonder lovablechevy had such a hard time - it's much harder than on an SNES mini. The metal is a bit flimsy on the pins and there aren't any plastic tabs on the side of the slot to grab to help pull it up.

good to know it wasn't just me! i ended up breaking some pins i think...

this guide would have been handy when i tried to take off the slot the first time... but, glad we have such a great guide now!

[Triton]

I just desoldered the stock cartslot, busted it off and am in the process of wiring up an original snes cartslot to the board. the stock slot was a peice of crap anyway, carts would go in easy then you would have to hold down the system and yank them out! i already had this slot rewired for a snes that i killed (original not mini) so i just cut the wires restripped em on one end and have the relocation almost done